The Immanent Frame » Janet Jakobsen

Janet Jakobsen

Janet R. Jakobsen is Director of the Center for Research on Women and a professor of Women's Studies at Barnard College. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limit of Religious Tolerance with Ann Pellegrini. She is also the editor of the forthcoming Secularism and, with Elizabeth Castelli, of Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence.

Posts by Janet Jakobsen:

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Marriage plots

Despite the putative separation of church and state, one of the major places in the U.S. where religion and the state remained entwined is around sexuality, specifically at the point of marriage, where religious officials are actually empowered to act on behalf of the state. And whenever politicians talk about marriage laws, they nearly always do so with reference to religious commitments—and the political affiliation or philosophy of the policymaker doesn’t much matter in terms of this outcome.